Richard Patterson, who was 44 at the time, had been arrested the next day for the attack on the 19-year-old girl in the alley off Barking Road on February 13, 2004.

But the teenager didn’t want to go ahead with the prosecution at the time and the case was dropped.

Patterson, however, was arrested two years ago for a sexual assault on another woman, in her 30s, at his address in North Road, Romford.

Police reopened the 2004 case and contacted the first woman, now in her 20s, and Patterson was further charged with rape and perverting the course of justice. He was convicted at Southend Crown Court last year for perverting justice, but the jury failed to reach a verdict on raping the teenager and the sexual assault on the second woman and a retrial was ordered.

Patterson, now 44, was found guilty at the retrial yesterday at Basildon Crown Court and given six years for rape and two years for sexual assault.

It was the investigation into the 2012 sexual assault incident which led police to re-examine the 2004 rape case in East Ham that finally brought Patterson to justice.

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